It’s been an exciting year for phone upgrades—Apple’s latest iPhones launched earlier this month, and Samsung’s Galaxy 25 series kicked things off back in January. If you’ve recently made the jump to a new device, it might be tempting to toss your old phone in a drawer and forget about it. But instead of letting it collect dust, why not sell or trade it in to recover some of your upgrade costs? Just be sure to back up your data and reset the phone to factory settings first. I’ll walk you through the steps.
How to Wipe Your Phone Before Selling It
Be sure to follow this checklist each time you recycle, sell, or trade in your old phone. Bonus: These steps also work for tablets.
(Credit: Apple/PCMag)
1. Back Up Your Data
Before you do anything else, back up your device. We have instructions for Android and iOS to get you started. To keep any sensitive personal data, photos, or videos safe, consider saving them to an external hard drive or secure cloud storage service first.
2. Disable Lost or Stolen Phone Tracking
Next, turn off Apple’s and Google’s Find My settings so you don’t continue to receive alerts about the device after you’ve removed it, and more importantly, so whoever ends up with the device can set it up for themselves.
3. Remove the Phone From Your Accounts
Visit your antivirus app or password manager app’s Settings menu and remove the old device from your list of approved devices. You may want to do the same for any other web service that tracks your devices, such as a VPN or streaming app. This prevents new owners from accessing information about you, such as your name, birth date, and home address.
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4. Completely Erase It
If you’re using iOS, navigate to Settings > General > Transfer or Reset iPhone/iPad. Once you are sure you have backed up all of the data, follow the prompts to erase your content and settings. Android users can find the Reset option in the device’s Settings menu. Again, ensure that you back up all your data before proceeding. In both cases, this returns the device to its factory default settings, which means all your apps, data, and even software updates are gone.
Finally, if you want to avoid the trade-in hassle altogether, you can use your old phone as a wireless webcam or explore this list of alternative uses for it.
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About Our Expert
Kim Key
Senior Writer, Security
Experience
I review privacy tools like hardware security keys, password managers, private messaging apps and ad-blocking software. I also report on online scams and offer advice to families and individuals about staying safe on the internet. Before joining PCMag, I wrote about tech and video games for CNN, Fanbyte, Mashable, The New York Times, and TechRadar. I also worked at CNN International, where I did field producing and reporting on sports that are popular with worldwide audiences.
In addition to the below categories, I also exclusively cover adblockers, authenticator apps, hardware security keys, and private messaging apps.
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